I’m in love with the new Ford Evos. There’s only one problem, Ford isn’t selling them. It’s a concept car. A design exploration. A glimpse at where Ford may be taking design in the future.
This tends to piss me off. My friend Nicholas Ellis put it best: “Did Apple ever introduce concepts?” He’s right.
Year after year, Steve Jobs introduced kickass, covetable products and built one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world. In that same time period, Microsoft unveiled prototype after prototype of vaporware products that never saw the light of retail or lit up their balance sheet.
Now, I know cars have a few more moving parts (not to mention more regulations and legal liabilities than a mobile phone), but I’d love to see Ford speed this car into showrooms.
Too often, companies release daring, evocative concept designs to test consumer opinions. The research folks listen to every piece of feedback, then the designers go back to work, sanding off all the corners that turned up noses.
And there’s the rub.
The next year, that bold concept is reintroduced as a ho-hum production model. The people who hated it now think it’s “meh”, the people who loved it now think it’s “meh” and the sales numbers usually end up being “meh”.
When you soften the edges that offend some people, you end up removing the edges that infatuate others. Never simply seek consensus when you have the opportunity to enflame true passion. Build remarkable. Piss a few people off. Create LOVERS and HATERS. Never create “meh”.
Evangelists and Raving Fans > Deal of the Day CustomersFord Evos Concept Reveal by Ford Motor Company on Flickr.
Well put Charlie! To add a favorite Steve quote that relate here:
“For something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”- Steve Jobs
“This is what customers pay us for–to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We’re supposed to be really good at this. That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to customers, but it’s hard for them to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s great!’”
